Fukuoka
— — the city where the ramen broth is the colour of milk.
Not only on a wall.
“The largest city on Kyushu, set on Hakata Bay where the island faces toward the Korean Strait. Two old towns, Hakata and Fukuoka, grew on either side of the Naka River and merged into one in 1889. The yatai food stalls still set up along the river at dusk, and the local tonkotsu ramen — pork-bone broth boiled until it turns opaque — was invented here in the 1940s. Each July the Hakata Gion Yamakasa festival sends one-ton wooden floats running through the streets at dawn. The cherry trees at Maizuru Park come out a week before Kyoto's. from the studio
Fukuoka, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
Fukuoka is the largest city on the southern Japanese island of Kyushu, with a population of about 1.6 million. It sits on Hakata Bay, on the north shore of Kyushu, facing the Genkai Sea and the Korean Strait beyond. The city was formed in 1889 by merging the merchant town of Hakata, east of the Naka River, with the former samurai castle town of Fukuoka to the west. Hakata Port has handled trade with the Asian mainland for more than a thousand years, and the city remains Japan's closest major gateway to Korea, with regular ferries to Busan a few hours across the strait.
Each July the city hosts Hakata Gion Yamakasa, a 700-year-old festival in which seven neighbourhood teams race one-ton wooden floats through the streets of Hakata. The climactic Oiyama run begins at 4:59 a.m. on 15 July from Kushida Shrine, where each float covers a five-kilometre course in roughly half an hour. Earlier in the year, the cherry trees at Maizuru Park — the grounds of the former Fukuoka Castle — bloom about a week ahead of Kyoto's, drawing the first hanami crowds of the Japanese spring.
The most distinctive evening in Fukuoka is the yatai — open-air food stalls that set up along the Naka River and around Tenjin and Nakasu around 6 p.m. and pack up before dawn. About 100 stalls operate under city licence, the largest concentration in Japan, and the local Hakata tonkotsu ramen — pork-bone broth boiled until it turns opaque white, served over thin straight noodles — was first sold from a yatai in 1941. Other Fukuoka specialities to look for include mizutaki chicken hotpot, motsunabe offal stew, and the small chicken meatballs called tebasaki gyoza.